This very interesting afternoon was arranged in the impressive environment of the Foreign Press Association, off Pall Mall, on 16^th March 2005

Jane Collis, RLN London and South East Manager, welcomed approximately 50 participants and gave an update on the recent activities of the Regional Language Network London. These include:

• the launch of a major language skills audit at Heathrow, Heathrow Talking to the World
• a briefing on the value of London’s language skills for the London 2012 Olympic Bid Team
• completion of the first phase of a project to set guidelines and minimum standards for Language Support Services across the capital’s public services
• the London launch of Languages Work, a campaign and toolkit developed by CILT, the National Centre for Languages, to promote the true value of languages in the workplace to learners of all ages

This was followed by an introduction to Cultural and Language Skills for Exporters as supported by UK Trade & Investment. Richard Higgins, Network and Strategy Director, UK Trade & Investment, gave a general overview of services provided by his organisation to companies looking to export, followed by Joanne Alexander-Sefre’s more detailed analysis. Joanne works as an Export Communications Review Consultant.

The supplier perspective was represented by LTC’s managing director Adriane Rinsche who talked about various application areas for the LTC-Communicator, a multilingual e-Communication tool used in various application environments.

After a short break, Andrew Cooke, Director of Strategy and Marketing, Think London, then gave an impressive account of language and cultural skills and services for inward investment, including several case studies. He pointed out that London, as the most multicultural city in the world with a huge variety of languages spoken by native speakers in the various London communities, is an ideal location for foreign companies. For example, major airlines centralised their European support services in London rather than maintaining national centres in the different countries separately.

Finally Sharon Giles, On-line Products Development Officer for CILT, the National Centre for Languages reported about BLIS Services, and gave an update on recent developments with BLIS Services, CILT’s one-stop shop for language and cultural expertise, located at www.blis.org.uk. A review has been carried out to cover all aspects of the services and the new look BLIS Services website will soon be available with improvements to more closely meet the needs of its target audiences.